


Eighteen

by diminished (orphan_account)



Category: Dear Evan Hansen - Pasek & Paul/Levenson
Genre: M/M, and then it branches off, canon compliant initially, connor's pov, tw: referenced self harm, tw: suicide attempt
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-07-06
Updated: 2017-07-06
Packaged: 2018-11-28 16:07:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,396
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11421453
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/diminished
Summary: Everything becomes comparatively easier after he makes the decision.---Connor has his suicide all planned out, but Evan messes everything up.





	Eighteen

Everything becomes comparatively easier after he makes the decision.

 

Because there are no real consequences, really, after you’ve planned your own death. Everything becomes relative––whatever you do today, whatever you say won’t _matter_ , and you won’t have to apologize for it. You won’t have to hurt.

 

The whole decision makes him feel nothing. It makes Connor Murphy feel nothing in his senior year of high school, when he decides he’s going to kill himself on the first Thursday of November. He’s been wrestling with the decision for years now. Staring at the scrapes on his arm, wondering how deep he’d have to cut for every part of him to bleed out; examining a bottle of pills, wondering if he can get them all down in time or if they will even be enough. Wondering, wondering, wondering.

 

He’s so damn _sick_ of wondering.

 

Nothing’s ever happened. He’s always hesitated--not moved fast enough, not cut deep enough. He’s ended up in the hospital, stuck up on life support and hurting all over but hurting more inside because why, _why_ does his body have such a strong will to live when his own mind can’t keep up?

 

After his first attempt, when his father grabs him roughly by the arm and steers him out of the hospital, his scars burn under the touch and his fingers itch to take out a cigarette, to pop a pill, to grab a pair of scissors because he wants to get away again. To let himself out. _please,_ dad. But they’re in public and he’s under his father’s close scrutiny and he’s trapped, imprisoned, restrained, because if he dies then everyone will say Larry and Cynthia Murphy must have fucked up and Larry Murphy doesn’t fucking want that.

 

And when he gets home, his dad takes away his pills and hides the scissors and knives in the house and throws out his cigarettes. Connor lays on his bed and stares up at the ceiling and feels something dark and ugly twist in his gut.

 

It’s his own fault, he thinks, that he hasn’t succeeded yet.

 

Because when he does--when he _does_ die, his father can’t lock him in his room and take away everything he copes with. His mother can’t cry when he gets home when she looks at him, sees the scars on his arm freshly ripped open. His sister can’t stare at him like she hates the brother that he’s become--defective, faulty, messed up--can’t snarl at him for having stopped trying.

 

Except he’s still alive. He’s survived and he’s alive and so he plans the act again, the summer of twelfth grade, when he’s more sure of himself. he won’t mess it up this time; there won’t be a possibility of survival. The apartment building five blocks from his house is eighteen floors tall, and no one survives a fall of eighteen floors.

 

He sets a date.

 

He’s almost giddy when he gets to school on Tuesday. Jared Kleinman says he looks like a school shooter and he almost laughs at the irony of it. If Connor Murphy had a gun in his hands, the first thing he’d do would be to shoot himself.

 

And then he sees Evan.

 

Evan, who always picks at his hands when he’s nervous. Evan, who stares at the ground when someone looks at him and looks small, so small, hunched over like that with his eyes on the ground. Evan, whose every other sentence is an apology.

 

He’s sporting a cast, Connor notices. It’s wound around his arm, clean and blank and unsigned. Fuck it, Connor thinks. he has two days left to live, he can talk to Evan fucking Hansen if he wants to.

 

“So, um,” he says, and it’s almost comforting when Evan doesn’t flinch or move away like most people do. “What happened to your arm?”

 

“Oh, it’s--” Evan looks down. He doesn’t look back up. “I fell out of a tree, actually.”

 

“Fell out of a _tree?_  Well, that is just the saddest fucking thing I’ve ever heard.” The words are out of his mouth before he can stop them. It’s not because he’s angry or anything. This is just how he is–sarcastic and crude and condescending, generally not a fun person to be around _._ C onnor _knows_. It just takes too much energy to try being a decent person when he knows other people won’t reciprocate.

 

Evan is silent, and Connor’s mind doesn’t like the silence because he doesn’t like being ignored when he’s having a real life, face-to-face conversation with someone. It’s vaguely insulting. He says, “no one’s signed your cast.”

 

“No,” Evan confirms, picking at his cuticles. “I know.”

 

“I’ll sign it.”

 

“You don’t have to.”

 

“Do you have a sharpie?”

 

Evan reaches into his pocket and then pulls out a black sharpie, then takes a step backwards, holding the object up at a full arm’s length away. And Connor gets it, really. He’s mentally insane Connor, drug addict Connor, school shooter Connor. Of course Evan’s scared of him. But something still irks him from the distance evan puts between them. The kid doesn’t even _know_ him, what gives him the right to be so afraid?

 

He grabs Evan’s left arm, roughly, and pulls it towards himself. He doesn’t bother to apologize when Evan flinches in pain, doesn’t bother to ask permission as he scrawls his name on the cast, as large as he can make it.

 

_CONNOR_

 

He gets some sadistic pleasure from seeing the sloppy capital letters now occupying Hansen’s cast. It’s nice seeing his name somewhere. It probably won’t even get written on his grave. A blank, unmarked tombstone because Connor Murphy wasn’t worth remembering. But it’s okay, now, because he has his name written on some kid’s fucking cast.

 

“Oh, great, thanks.” Evan says, deadpan.

 

“Yeah. Now we can both pretend that we have friends.”

 

He’s not serious, but Evan looks down and mumbles, “good point.”

 

“Is this yours?” Connor asks then, reaching into his pocket and pulling out a folded piece of paper. He straightens it out, scanning the first few lines of text. “I found it on the printer. Dear Evan Hansen. That’s your name.”

 

And Evan makes a weird noise and tries to reach for the letter. And that’s when Connor gets curious. Just what does he have to hide?

 

Curiosity kills. It kills cats with nine lives. Connor barely even has one.

 

He reads the letter.

 

* * *

 

At first, he’s too numb, too detached to feel anything but anger. They’re the only two people in the damn room. Hansen wrote the letter to piss him off. to manipulate him. He and Jared are friends, right? it was probably jared’s idea. This letter is supposed to make Connor fall apart, he realizes. Then Evan can laugh at him in the hallways. Laugh at his undoing. Call him mentally insane.

 

“Wait, I need that back.” Evan sounds frantic. Connor hates him, suddenly. He  _despises_ him, Evan fucking Hansen whom Connor Murphy actually thought he could be _friends_ with--

 

Stupid. Stupidstupidstupid.

 

“Fuck _off,_  Hansen.” He shoves the letter in his pocket and drops the sharpie back into Evan’s hands.

 

He leaves the room.

 

* * *

 

When he gets to the building, he’s numb again. The letter hangs in his pocket like an invisible weight. He feels it every time he takes a step.

 

The elevator has eighteen buttons--one for the parking lot, seventeen for every floor above the first. They’re arranged in a perfect six by three grid. He presses the button for the eighteenth floor and steps back, watching it flicker on. Everything feels methodical and precise and dead.

 

The doors close on him. He barely notices. He’s imagined this moment so many times that it’s lost its meaning.

 

Someone yells, “hold the door!”

 

At first, he doesn’t react. He’s numb, disconnected, floating. The voice could be any voice in the distance. It doesn’t have to be directed to him.

 

And then someone’s hand grips the closing doors and pries it back open again and Connor blinks, the reality of the situation settling on him. _Gr_ _eat,_ he thinks, he’s on an elevator ride to his death and he has to share it with someone else---

 

And then he _sees._

 

Sees the familiar striped blue polo shirt, the eyes blue eyes wide with question. That’s Evan fucking Hansen.

**Author's Note:**

> if you hit kudos i wou ld cry


End file.
